Blind Spots: Practical Atheism

0:01 Welcome to Sunday homilies with me, Father Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you. And I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the one who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this and other Sunday mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday or by texting Sunday to 33777. You can also follow or subscribe in your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless. The Lord be with you. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew.

0:37 Chapter 22, verses 1 through 14.

2:00 The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus. Why don't you have a seat? So growing up, my brother was legendary. My brother still is legendary. I have a legendary older brother. But when I was growing up, my brother was legendary for his ability to have this thing. It's a superpower called selective hearing. Familiar with this? So I have no idea how this would happen. But they'd say, hey, Mike, go get your brother. It's time for supper. I'd be like, Mark, come down for supper. Like calling up to his bedroom or going downstairs. Here we are going downstairs. Like, Mark, dinner's ready. Nothing. so I go walk down the stairs, and I can look around the corner. I can see him sitting in front of the TV, or actually, I would often see him standing in front of the TV. I'm not sure why. That's how we watch TV in high school, but I'm like, I can see him. I'm like, Mark, Mark, Mark, so I get closer. I'm like 10 feet away from him. I'm like, Mark, Mark, and he's nothing. I go right next to him. I'm looking. I'm like, Mark. I'm yelling, and then he looks, and he looks totally surprised. He's like, what? What? Why are you yelling? I'm like, are you kidding me? This is, what a legend.

3:02 And it's one of those situations where it's truly amazing, but it's possible that I think all of us have this ability to some degree and in some areas of life. Like it's the, it's, maybe you have that roommate who can walk past the pile of dishes all week and not even notice. I didn't even see those dishes. Or the person who left out their half-eaten cereal bowl and it's been, you know, a month and a half and it's on the coffee table. And you're like, are you going to do that? Take care of that cereal bowl. What cereal bowl? They just, you don't see it. How many parents have you like, okay, I washed the clothes. I folded them. I put them on the step and they just walk right by. Like no one, no one even acknowledges. No one even does anything with this. And I'm no better. I'm actually probably the worst. I've lived in the Newman house for 22 years right now. And there's a little apartment upstairs. There is a floorboard that a couple of floorboards that it keeps, the thing keeps falling off. And some, some places it's not even there. I've lived there for two decades and I have not done anything about it.

3:58 I'm like, well, I guess that's just how the floorboards are here. I mean, just like my ability. I mean, also, this is horrible. If you have come up into the apartment in the last, I don't know, since June, you walk in the door, you look down on right there on the floor next to the doorway is an unopened box of ant traps that's been there since June. I want to specify it's unopened. That's gross. If it was open. No, it's unopened. And I just leave it. I walk in and walk out. I'm just like, that's where the ant traps go, I guess. And it's, again, this is remarkable. Our ability to ignore something we'd rather not deal with is remarkable. Like our ability to ignore whatever we'd rather not deal with is incredible. So this is the sixth week of a six-part series we call Blind Spots. And the whole idea comes from Psalm 19, where the psalmist says, From hidden faults, O Lord, equip me. That God, there's stuff in my life that I don't pay attention to. There's stuff in my life that I have these invisible vices.

4:54 They're there, but I just don't look at them because I don't want to look at them. And not that the stains are small. It's just that we've developed these socially acceptable excuses to have them in our lives. So for the last six weeks, you talked about anger and we talked about entitlement. We talked about gossip. We talked about complaining and worry. And here we are today. I think this, and there's so many, there's so many that we have, these so many blind spots, so many of these invisible vices we have. But I think today's, it's possible that all of them can be traced to the one we're talking about today. So we have the gospel, right? Here's the parable Jesus tells. And here's a king who he's throwing a wedding feast for his son and he invites all these people. Now, I don't know if you've ever been struck by this. I've always been struck by the overreaction some people had to being invited to the wedding. It says they were invited to the wedding and some that mistreated those inviting them to the wedding. Some they beat up, some they killed.

5:47 I'm like, I've never been invited to a thing and thought I'm gonna kill you right now. A bit of an overreaction. But I have done this other thing. It says someone that got the invitation, it says this, some ignored the invitation. And went away, went to his farm, went to his business. And that's the blind spot. Our ability to ignore what we'd rather not deal with is remarkable. And our ability to ignore God, like the idea of like, I like doing what I'm currently doing, and I don't want to be bothered at this moment.

6:23 I just don't want to be bothered. Years ago, I came across this article about the population crisis in Asia. South Korea is remarkable, the population crisis, but also in Japan. This article was about Japan specifically, and they projected that by 2060, by 2060, Japan's population will fall by a third, which is the author of the article pointed out, that is the same percentage as were killed in the Black Death in the 14th century. I mean, the reason why, there's many factors, but one of the reasons is because, by and large, the populace of Japan is just not interested in having children. They're not interested. Not only that, they're not even interested in having relationships. Not only that, they're simply just not interested in sex. They had a study that, it was in 2011, 61% of men and 49% of women, 18 to 34, were not only not in a relationship, they had no interest in being in a relationship.

7:21 half of those women and a quarter of those men said not only were they not interested in sex that they actually despised the idea of sexual contact there was a 31 year old man from japan he's he said this he said i find some of my female friends attractive but i've learned to live without sex so emotional entanglements are too complicated he's just he said this he said i just can't be bothered there's actually a japanese phrase a japanese term called menukasai Thank you. Mendukasai, that's what it just means. It just means can't be bothered. It means it's too complicated. I don't want to be interrupted. I just can't be bothered. And you think about this, Mendukasai. People would say this, Mendukasai, I just can't be bothered. I don't want to have something more complicated in my life than I already have. And again, even in the face of a chance for a life-changing relationship, I'm just going to ignore the opportunity.

8:18 I'm just going to ignore the invitation. Because I don't want a life-changing relationship because I don't want my life to change. So I'm just going to ignore this opportunity. I'm just going to ignore the invitation. You know, I love etymologies or like origins of words. So the word, the origin of the word ignore, it's Latin, as you probably know. It comes from the word ig and norus. So ig means not. and norus means to know. So you probably can see that the word ignorant and the word ignore are incredibly similar, but they don't mean this, obviously don't mean the same thing, right? To be ignorant is to not know.

8:58 But to ignore something is it not to know? To ignore something is to act as if you didn't know. It's so, so different. To be ignorant, I just didn't know, but to ignore it is to act as if I didn't know. So years ago, John Paul II, second. He talked about this. He talked about what it's like when Christians act as if they don't know. He called it, he called it this, he called it practical atheism. So we all know what an atheist is, right? Atheist is someone who doesn't believe in God. Here's a, here's a question. Um, what, just locking your answer in your head, what percentage of Americans do you think would claim to be atheist? Just like what percentage would say, okay, here's the box, theist, atheist, whatever. What percentage of Americans would say, okay, I'm, I claim I don't believe in God. It's to check the There was a 2023-2024 religious landscape survey that came out and said this. It found that only 5% of Americans are atheists. Only 5%, which is remarkable.

9:54 I thought it was like, if you watch the TV, it's like everyone's an atheist. Only 5% of Americans would say, I do not believe God exists. And yet John Paul II said this. He said, the practical atheist is someone who says, okay, check the box, God exists. And yet I live as if God doesn't exist. I'm not ignorant. I just ignore this. That's what practical atheism is. Practical atheism is believing in God, even professing faith in Jesus. And even this, it's even really meaning it. Like I really actually do believe this. But for all intents and purposes, I live as if God didn't exist. For all intents and purposes, I live as if Jesus never saved me. then I check the box, I know, but then I live as if I don't know. Then I know I've been invited. I just ignore the invitation.

10:48 And again, it's one thing to get the invitation and abuse the messenger and kill the messenger. I don't think any of us want to do that. We just say, but I'm in the middle of something. So I'll just pretend that I didn't hear. I'll just pretend that I didn't notice. I'll just selectively pay attention to what I want, and I'll just ignore what I don't want. And the question I have to ask is, is that us? Is that some of us? Is that maybe all of us? And the good news is, the good thing about practical atheism is that it's really, really practical. Like, you don't have to, like, wonder, like, I don't know if that's me. We just have to look. So there's a St. Francis quote, a quote by St. Francis of Assisi. People attribute it to him. It's really, really famous. Some people really, really love it. I've even seen it in the bumper stickers. It's the quote that says, preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. Maybe you've heard that one. Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words. Well, there's two problems with that.

11:39 Number one, St. Francis of Assisi never said that. So stop saying he did. I'm here to defend him. Number two is the gospel always needs words. Like preaching the gospel always needs words. 1 Peter 3.15 says, always be ready to give a reason for the faith that's within you. Always be ready to explain why do you believe what you believe? So we have to speak. But here's the question. hopefully people will hear the gospel from us. The question is this, do they ever see the gospel in us?

12:08 And hopefully they hear the gospel, but will they ever see the gospel in us? And I'm not talking about perfection. I'm just talking about practically living. If someone, here's the question, if someone followed you around for a week, would they get to see anything different from someone who wasn't Catholic? Is there any difference? If someone followed you for a week, would they see any difference between how you lived and how a friend of Jesus lives? Someone followed you around for a week, would they see anything different from you and someone who wasn't striving to be a saint? And again, this is really, really practical. In fact, there's three areas. I'll say in the area of speech, in the area of schedule, in the area of stuff. We have to make it really practical. In the area of speech, if someone heard about how I talked about people I don't like, would they be struck by how much like Jesus I talk? Or they say you talk like everyone else. We had a bishop here, Bishop Paul Serba, for 10 years. We got it for almost exactly 10 years.

13:08 And when he showed up to the diocese, it was one of those things that was amazing. He was an incredible priest, became an incredible bishop. But when we got here, there was a case, you know, Minnesota opened up their statute of limitations when it came to abuse cases. And there was one abuse case that happened in the diocese of Duluth 70 years ago by a visiting priest. It wasn't even one of our priests. and there's a court case against the diocese, and there was a lawyer in the Twin Cities who it seemed like he didn't just want justice for victims, because we all would want justice for victims. It seemed like he was just wanting as much money as possible, and so for 10 years of Bishop Serba being our bishop, he had to drive to the cities multiple times per week trying to not just take care of the victims, because that's what we need to do, but deal with this legal court case. It was one of those situations where I imagine that behind closed doors, he'd be like, oh, that knucklehead lawyer is just a money grab. He's not interested in helping people. He just wants to take as much money for himself. I never heard him say anything like this. Whenever I heard him talk about this man, he always used his full name and said, Mr. So-and-so. I'm going to visit Mr. So-and-so. I'm going to do our best to get this resolved. I'm going to visit Mr. So-and-so.

14:15 The way he would talk about people who were trying to fleece the diocese was like someone who actually believed in Jesus. So how do I talk about others? Do I talk about others differently? Or how about this? Do we talk about God any differently? I have a friend, she's not Catholic, but she went to a Bible college in the Twin Cities. And she said one of her instructors once pointed this out. He pointed out that no other world religion uses its God's name as a curse like Christians do, or people who claim to be Christians. that it's completely uncommon in Hinduism or in Islam or in Judaism to use your God's name as a curse. But people who claim to be Christians say, oh my God, all the time. We say the name of Jesus Christ all of the time. If someone were to listen to how I spoke, would they tell that I was any different than someone who didn't believe in Jesus? Or my schedule? This is maybe the obvious, most obvious one. Someone looking at my schedule think, oh my gosh, that's clearly someone pursuing holiness. That's clearly someone who loves Jesus. Why? Because I said a quick prayer before my meal or as I was falling off to sleep. Like, have I allowed my schedule to change in any way to get closer to Jesus? If I haven't, how is my life any different? I mean, even Sunday. Think about this.

15:31 This is, here you are. Well done. Got the A for the day. Here we are in mass. But you know, the command for Sabbath was not only to enter into Sunday worship, also enter into Sunday rest. If someone looked at my Sunday, would they see someone living differently than someone who didn't know they were set free? And this is right from the gospel, right? The invitation to the wedding feast of the son of the king is this. We're invited to the, this is the wedding feast of the son of the king. That's what the mass is. And yet how often are we tempted to just ignore the invitation? So our speech, our schedule, and of course our stuff, and we can look at this and say, okay, to pull up my bank statement from the last month, is there any difference in my bank statement? Because I'm a follower of Jesus from someone who was not a follower of Jesus. If I want to see if I'm a practical atheist or not, I just have to look at those three areas.

16:27 My speech, my schedule, and my stuff. You know, years ago, I remember when I first had an encounter with Jesus, I remember reading stories of martyrs. I just, I loved reading stories about martyrs, but I also remember thinking, like that, that would never be now. That could never happen now because that was way back in the day that people were able to like lay down their lives for love of Jesus. Long time ago, I don't know if you know this, but in the 20th century, more people were killed for their faith in Jesus in the 20th century than in all 19 centuries combined. 11 years ago, this, this February, if you remember those, those 20 Coptic Christians in Libya, they were, they were migrant workers from Egypt and they were working in Libya and Muslims had taken them, had arrested them, had tortured them for weeks. There was a 21st guy. He wasn't a Christian. He was from Ghana. He wasn't even a Christian. And if you remember this, those Muslims brought them to the shores of Libya on the shores of the Mediterranean, the coast of Libya on the shores of the Mediterranean and they cut their throats and cut their heads off. They actually told the Ghanaian man, they said, you can go free if you want. You're not a Christian. But he said this. He said, he looked at the witness of these 20 other men's lives and he said, no, no, no, I'm not going anywhere. Their God is my God. So 21 Christian martyrs of 11 years ago. So imagine that, imagine that happened right here. Imagine that in the United States of America, it became suddenly, it became illegal to be a Christian. Imagine if in our country, it became illegal to be a Catholic.

18:01 here's the question I have to ask myself we have to ask ourselves if we were accused of being a Christian if we were accused of being a disciple of Jesus would there be enough evidence to convict us when people look at our lives, what do they see?

18:23 There's a man, his name is Dr. David Gibbs. He's a lawyer and a preacher. I hadn't known about him until a couple of weeks ago, but he shared the story. He shared that he'd been invited to a church across, I think he's in Ohio, across the other side of the state in Ohio to preach this kind of, this sermon series on a Sunday morning. Saturday before the Sunday, the someone from the church called them and said dr gibbs uh something something horrible's happened so what's what's happening said two of our best young men two of our best dads husbands and fathers in our in our in our community they were out they're out today going door to door inviting people to our church because you're coming they knew you're coming tomorrow they wanted to bring as many people to your to your talk as possible as many people to church as possible they came to a stop sign intersection, someone didn't see a stop sign. And both of those two young dads are dead. And Dr. Gibbs was like, well, what do you want me to do? I'll do whatever you want me to do. I'll come tomorrow. I'll preach. If you just want me to show up and pray, I'll show up and pray.

19:22 Just let me know. And the guy from the church said, just, I don't know. I don't know. Let me pray about it. Two hours later, he calls Dr. Gibbs and says, Dr. Gibbs, I don't know what's happening, but you have to come. You have to come tomorrow. So I'll come. He said, I don't know how to describe it other than there's a revival happening. He said, what in the world? What do you mean? And he said, what happened was the two wives of these two men, Carol and Anita are their names. He said, Carol and Anita, they're obviously, their world is shattered right now. But soon after they found out that their husbands had been killed this morning, they asked their pastor, they said, pastor, take us to the car, take us to the vehicle that our husbands were killed in. And they're like, you don't want to see that. He said, no, we have to go there. So he brought them to the car and they opened up the car and they found the list of names of the people that their husbands were going to go visit. He said, can you now take us and help us complete their mission? Like, help us finish the task that our husbands died trying to accomplish.

20:19 So he did. Went to the first house and they simply said, they said, and our husbands died trying to get this message to you. He said this, he said, Just come.

20:42 Please come and see. He said, would you please come? We'd be so grateful. and he said just the word started spreading by the next Sunday morning when he showed up to this church he showed up two hours early the place was packed there was there was news cameras there was news stations there was reporters all over the place and when but there were hundreds if not thousands of people and it is crazy because they wanted to see the faith of these two women he said these two women they never preached a sermon they never taught a class he said this he said but their lives had something worth looking at. And then Dr. Gibbs asked the question, what in your life is worth looking at? Or is it all just words? is my life or does my life have something worth looking at? That doesn't have to look like Anita and Carol's life.

21:36 But the question is this, is my life different at all from someone who wasn't trying to be a saint? Because this is our blind spot. Our blind spot is we just ignore God's invitation. Our blind spot is this practical atheism. I believe he exists, but I don't live like it. So what's the remedy? The remedy is every one of our blind spots has remedies. And so the two remedies for a blind spot of ignoring is this very, very simple. It's actually, before I get to that, I want to say this. I want to blame someone for this blind spot. and whose fault is it that we have any of these blind spots whose fault is it that we have even the possibility of practical atheism and the reality is whose fault it is god's fault see here's here's god here god is so good and god is is is so holy god is a source of all being that he should be unavoidable like the reality of god's existence should be absolutely unavoidable But what has God done?

22:36 God has made himself ignorable. He made himself ignorable. Why? For the sake of love. Because if he made himself unavoidable, would any of us actually ever love him? He's made himself ignorable. Why? Because love always pays attention. And this is the remedy. The two remedies for the blind spot of ignoring God or practical atheism is number one is paying attention. And number two is asking one thing, asking one question. because love pays attention. So I want to go back to my legendary brother. So my legendary brother, who has this incredible ability for selective hearing, you would think, he's been married for 27 years now, and you'd think if there's anything you don't want to have in marriage, it's selective hearing. If there's one ingredient that would not serve your marriage well, it's selective hearing. And some of you agree, that's true. But for 27 years, I would say that I've told he and his wife this, they have one of the best relationships I've ever seen.

23:32 And one of the reasons is, Well, they've worked on it really a lot. I told them that once and they're like, you don't know how hard it's been to have one of the best relationships we've ever seen. But there's this meme, this meme I came across years ago. I love to point out, it was a meme about marriage. And it said this, the person said, after 20 years of marriage, I've discovered that 80% of being married is yelling the word, what? From the other room.

23:57 So my brother and his wife, they decided, they made a decision. Okay, we're not going to bicker. because we're not going to do it. We're not going to bicker. We're not going to do that kind of drive-by, sniping at each other. We're not going to call from the other room. They have three rules. If we have something to say, three things. Number one, get in the same room. Don't call from the other end of the house. Don't call from the other room. Number one, get in the same room. Number two, get their attention and give your attention. So it's not just kind of like sharding it out to the sky. Someone needs to mow the lawn. Get attention and give attention. Number three is this. Say the thing clearly. So get in the same room, get attention and give attention, and say the thing clearly. With God, this is the same thing. God's made himself ignorable. So what we have to do, if we don't want to fall into that blind spot of ignoring God, is get in the same room with him.

24:50 We have to get in the same room and give him our attention. Those are the first two steps. Get in the same room, give him our attention, and then we have to do the second part, which is ask one thing. We have to say this clearly. I want to share this with you because this has changed my prayer life. This has changed my life. It's in every circumstance when I don't know exactly what to do or something's going on, I just have to ask this question. God, right now, how would you have me be? That's the speaking clearly. No matter what the situation is, to stop, get in the same room, give God attention, and ask one question. God, right now, how would you have me be? when I'm wrestling with gossip okay pause God right now how would you have me be when I'm angry just have this anger frustration God okay God right now how would you have me be because there's no one answer because God's answer changes because our circumstances change I'm not wrestling with anger anymore now it's entitlement God in this moment how would you have me be now I'm wrestling with complaint God in this moment now I'm worried okay God in this moment how would you have me be this is so simple there's not one answer but there's one question.

25:59 God, in this moment, how would you have me be? Because what is it to do? When I give God attention and then ask that one question, it demands that I'm in relationship with him. And that means that I can't live as if I'm not. So it's two things. Pay attention and ask one thing, God, right now, how would you have me be? And the crazy thing is this. God is real. He's going to answer you. Like God, he loves you. And so what he's going to do, he's going to remind you of those blind spots. He's going to give you the grace to bring it into the light, to not ignore the one in whom you believe, but to live like someone who believes. and to live a life without those blind spots, but to live a life...